Incidental corrective feedback provision for formulaic vs. Non-formulaic errors: EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices

Abstract

Research on corrective feedback (CF) and language teachers’ beliefs and practices on the provision of CF has been mainly limited to learners’ non-target-like use of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling (non-formulaic forms). Consequently, learners’ non-target-like use of formulaic sequences, that is, collocations, idioms, lexical bundles, and compounds (formulaic forms), has received scant attention in CF and teacher cognition studies. This study examined three Iranian English as a foreign language teachers’ stated beliefs and practices on treating learners’ non-target-like use of formulaic vs. non-formulaic forms through incidental reactive focus on form. The teachers’ stated beliefs about the provision of CF for learners’ non-target-like use of formulaic vs. non-formulaic forms were elicited through a questionnaire and stimulated recall interviews, and their practices were examined by drawing on 36 hours of audio- and video-recorded teacher-learner interactions in primarily communicative activities. The findings indicated that while learners’ non-target-like use of formulaic forms outnumbered that of non-formulaic ones in teacher-learner interactions, teachers provided CF, by far, more frequently for non-target non-formulaic forms than formulaic ones. The teachers were not always aware of the amount of CF they tended to provide for learners’ non-target-like use of different linguistic targets. The (in)consistencies between the teachers’ CF beliefs and CF provision for learners’ non-target-like use of formulaic vs. non-formulaic forms are discussed.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at at http://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2021.1943421 .

Keywords:

• Corrective feedback
• formulaic sequences
• formulaic language
• reactive focus on form
• teacher beliefs and practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leila Gholami

Leila Gholami is a PhD Candidate in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at Arizona State University, Arizona, USA. Her research interests primarily lie in the areas of incidental focus on form and formulaic language. She has published in the journals of Language Teaching Research, System, Foreign Language Annals, and Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics.